In many situations, it is desirable to encourage telephone communication from a particular class of persons. One class of persons comprises travelers at an airport who need encouragement to call a specific hotel for accommodations. Another class of persons comprises elderly parents or college students who need encouragement to call other family members to "keep in touch". A number of "encouragements" exist including telephones that automatically dial a predetermined number when the handset is lifted, and repertory dialing machines having a plurality of pre-programmed numbers. One product even includes large keys for dialing wherein each key accommodates a photograph of the person to be called. In this product, automatic dialing is commenced by first depressing a special key and then depressing the key containing the photograph. Such products however, frequently require special interconnections, auxiliary power, or replacement of an existing telephone set. Although such devices do encourage telephone usage, it is desirable to bring these and other features to existing telephone sets.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide automatic dialing capability to an existing telephone with minimum inconvenience due to electric interconnection.
It is another object of the invention to further encourage the use of telephone communication in such a way that billing for the telephone call is automatically directed to a party other than the calling party.